20 September 2016
The third day of the Conrad Festival – emotions and shivers

It can be said that they sometimes took us over or they got the better of someone. They are sometimes positive, but they can also be a strong, destructive force. If you try to play with them, they might turn out to be dangerous. They help us build relationships and experience the world intensively.

Emotions will be the subject of the third day of the Conrad Festival on the 26th of October, during which the audience will be able to participate in meetings with Colm Tóibín, Eustachy Rylski, Maria, Błażej and Jan Peszek, and listen to the traditional Conrad lecture.

“I touched such an intimacy, that if I wanted to go even deeper, I’d have to take off my skin and show my internal organs”, said Maria Peszek in one of her interviews. According to her, the artists’ job is to feel certain shivers and give them artistic form, instead of commenting reality. For the Peszek family – Błażej, Jan and Maria, expressing their emotions and using them to form artistic creations became a foundation of their work. During the meeting, conducted by Katarzyna Kubisiowska they will tell us about the creative freedom, but also about the responsibilities brought by it.

The creative transformation of emotions is just one way of ruling over them. In his project, Roman Dziadkiewicz combined research, literary and artistic practices, which resulted in the Surfaceology, a mini science-fiction novel, telling the story of a utopian world. There, he calls art the most sensitive, refined and in-depth method of navigating the complex reality. The meeting with Roman Dziadkiewicz and Ewa Majewska will be conducted by Anna Kałuża.

The third day of the festival will be also full of discussions regarding collective emotions. Who rules over them... and how? Should literature exert control over them? Eustachy Rylski and Paweł Reszka will discuss the place of writers in public debate, and they will answer the question why they might be a danger to the authorities.

At the end of the day, the audience will meet Colm Tóibin, one of the most outstanding contemporary Irish writers. During the meeting, conducted by Robert Kusk, Tóibin, who is listed on the list of the 300 most important British intellectuals published in 2001 by The Observer will tell us about the difficult emotions which come through to his literature and shape it.

Some will say that it is better to approach them with caution and let the conscious mind decide, other will say that they are what makes us human. Emotions are also an invaluable part of each community, as well as one of the many ways of communicating with others. Is it worth to live them intensively? The third day of the festival will certainly be full of them until the end.